Neil O’Keefe, senior vice president of marketing and content at the Data & Marketing Association, says that marketers began questioning direct mail’s endurance in 2007. That year, Statista reports that smartphone sales jumped 70% from the previous year to $8.7 billion. At the same time, the volume of mail sent through the U.S. Postal Service began to plummet: In 2006, people in the U.S. sent 213.1 billion pieces of mail, according to USPS; by 2017, they were sending 149.5 billion pieces each year, a 29.9% decline. By this point, smartphone sales had reached $55.6 billion. The price of postage and paper had skyrocketed, as did the number of internet users—everything seemed to hammer a nail into direct mail’s coffin.

You definitely want to avoid the tactics of spammers and the language that they employ. Loading the email blast with terms like “special offer” or “urgent news” could send up a flag for spam and that will get your email newsletter sent straight to the spam folder. For more information about sending emails that don’t look like spam, check out these email marketing laws for business owners.

There are many vendors out there who sell lists or rent them (though renting means that the list seller maintains ownership and control of the email list). These are collections of email addresses that the vendors sell to any business or individual who can pay the fees. Your email list is considered to be a purchased or shared list if it’s provided to you by a third party, like an email list vendor or affiliate. There's a few ways that vendors build these non opt-in email lists.

This is why it’s so important to make the time to establish strong connections with other influencers in your niche, and to view them as collaborators and not competitors. It was because of the relationships that we’ve built with these other influencers that allowed us to have our lead magnets and content shared directly to their own community. Which in turn led to us growing our mailing list by 56,000 new subscribers in just 30 days.
"Constant Contact makes it easy to create as many contact lists as we need. I can add an email address to multiple lists at once, or a reader can subscribe to several email lists. This allows us to send targeted emails. Sending people only the emails they want makes readers happier, increases open rates, and makes my email marketing efforts—and my time—more effective."
I am loving this article. I specifically like points 1 and 7. As for number 1, I think a quality list is better than a gigantic list of just anyone like you say. I think this is also true for “followers” and “likes”. Are the people following you genuinely caring about your content or just subscribing just to apease you? As for #7, we have to KNOW if our efforts are working and not just go off of a gut feeling. Great points here Erik. http://www.clickalchemy.com/assets/images/email-marketing-flow-img.png
Well, charity: water took an alternate route. Once someone donates to a charity: water project, her money takes a long journey. Most charities don't tell you about that journey at all -- charity: water uses automated emails to show donors how their money is making an impact over time. With the project timeline and accompanying table, you don't even really need to read the email -- you know immediately where you are in the whole process so you can move onto other things in your inbox.
It’s a best practice to ask the referrer not only for a friend’s email address, but also for a full name so that the message is personalized. Most important, remember to add the referee’s full name to the email as well. By referencing whom the email content was recommended by, you gain instant credibility and will attain much higher conversion rates.

The concept is simple. If someone is reading an in-depth blog post of yours, chances are they’re very interested in what you have to say on the topic. The key is to then offer them something that is directly related to the topic they’re reading about. You know they’re already interested, so by offering instantaneous extra value it’s not difficult to see why people would gladly sign up.

The most advanced email marketing services offer custom workflows where you can specify triggers based on actions (such as opening an email or making a purchase) or on inaction (such as ignoring emails). With these services, you can also set up a series of emails (such as tutorials) to be sent to segments of users, and you can pause or stop a campaign at any time. You can also move contacts into new segments once they have completed tutorials.
Before people hand over their email address, you’re going to have to offer them something enticing in exchange. This could be a free eBook, access to a Webinar, or the promise of discounts or deals exclusively for your subscribers. You could even repurpose some of your existing blog content and turn it into a guide or resource list. Whatever you decide to offer, just make sure it’s something people will recognize as holding true value!
Set your target audience. Audiences can be split up in a variety of ways including gender, age, geographic location, or buying habits. Before you send your blast, you want to make sure that you can segment people into different lists so you can target your blasts to the right people. Consider what demographic you want to target, and what they will need to fulfill your call-to-action.
Internet service providers (GMail, Yahoo, etc.) and anti-spam organizations create the spam traps to prevent spam from reaching people’s inboxes. The important thing for everyone to remember is if you use a purchased list, you are technically spamming the people on that list. Spam is unsolicited email and those people did not request your information.
Not really. Email addresses that belong to an "opt in" list have opted to receive emails from, say, the list-purchasing company -- not your company. Even if the opt-in process includes language like, "Opt in to receive information from us, or offers from other companies we think you might enjoy," the fact is the recipient doesn't recall having a prior relationship with you, specifically. This makes it highly likely for the recipients to mark you as "spam" when you arrive in their inboxes. Hey, if they don't recognize you or remember opting in to communications from you ... can you blame them?
Unsubscribe rate. Unsubscribes are always going to happen no matter what, and that’s usually OK because those people probably would never have bought from you anyway. However, a high unsubscribe rate can indicate that you are losing potential customers. Check the following: Why did people subscribe to your list in the first place, and are you delivering on that promise? Is the content of your autoresponder highly relevant to the segment it is being sent to? Are you sending too many sales emails with too little value emails?
This is a process described by Seth Godin known as permission marketing. The core concept of this idea is that you never market to someone that doesn’t want it, you first have to ask them for their permission. When someone signs up to your email not only do they become a warm lead but they give you their permission to send them offers and to market to them.

When you create a Mailchimp account, we automatically set you up with a no-cost Forever Free plan. This option allows you to experiment with our tools and figure out how to best use our platform. So if you’re just getting off the ground, this is one less cost you have to consider. You can remain on the Forever Free plan as long as you have 2,000 or fewer subscribers across all lists in your account.

Appear on top in Google search results. The title of your web page is used by Google as the suggested title of its search results. In addition, describe your company in an informative but precise manner. Domain names are also a significant portion of the search results of Google. Hence, pick an easy-to-read and descriptive domain name for your website. Moreover, subpages must also be easy to read. Moreover, meta descriptions are defined as page summaries usually made use of by Google on their results page. Write meta descriptions that are unique for every page using 160 characters or less.
Your best bet will be to give away something that’s valuable to your target market; for instance, a high-value digital asset on a niche topic. You can give away products (we’ve all seen contests where the prize is a free iPad or gift certificates), however this strategy often leads to entrants who are more interested in the money than in what you have to offer.
One hundred years ago, companies such as Sears, Roebuck & Co. and J.C. Penny Co. used customer data to send out catalogs and mailers. Back then, the companies possessed small sets of data, mainly names and addresses of customers. Now, marketers have mountains of complex data and are faced with a modern conundrum: How much personal data is too much to incorporate into the content?
Internet service providers (GMail, Yahoo, etc.) and anti-spam organizations create the spam traps to prevent spam from reaching people’s inboxes. The important thing for everyone to remember is if you use a purchased list, you are technically spamming the people on that list. Spam is unsolicited email and those people did not request your information.

I am loving this article. I specifically like points 1 and 7. As for number 1, I think a quality list is better than a gigantic list of just anyone like you say. I think this is also true for “followers” and “likes”. Are the people following you genuinely caring about your content or just subscribing just to apease you? As for #7, we have to KNOW if our efforts are working and not just go off of a gut feeling. Great points here Erik. http://www.clickalchemy.com/assets/images/email-marketing-flow-img.png

The subheadings in the email blast also need to engage the reader. Many recipients will not actually read the whole thing and instead, they will scan the newsletter. When they scan through the email blast, the subheadings will be one of the parts most likely to catch their attention. Use your subheadings as a way to organize the relevant information in the content of the email to make it easy for your readers to jump to the information that is relevant to them.

E-customers' most serious concern is security and privacy, followed by price, delivery cost, return policy, customer service, site design, navigation, one-click shopping, and personalization. E-marketers must assure customers that their sites use cybercrime-proof systems to protect ecustomer information and clearly display the security/privacy statement on their sites. Competitive prices, discounts, e-coupons, free delivery, and standard return policies motivate initial online purchases and repeat purchases. Nevertheless, requiring too many mouse clicks for navigating on a site, a lack of easily accessible help, technical difficulties, and requesting too much customer information for purchasing goods often causes shoppers to abandon their online shopping carts before reaching the checkout.

I typically create my email artwork in photoshop and then just drop in the jpeg using html and image mapping. Is there a “best practices” when it comes to actually putting the email together? Perhaps speaking from an editing perspective? Basically I make one big image and then use coding: img name, src, alt, a href and so forth. And for every different block, I simply create a new jpg image to use. Is there a better way I should be doing this?
You don’t even have to think you’re a spammer to feel bad. Many of us feel bad just for sending too many emails. Often solopreneurs are downright terrified of sending an email update to their subscribers. They say they don’t know what to say, but I think it’s that they’re afraid, somehow, that they’re bothering their subscribers. They aren’t sure they deserve to be in their inboxes, even if those same people signed up for their emails (through a double opt-in process, of course).
Besides the fact that email blasts can be spammy and impersonal, they’re also not the most effective way to make money. Although a large-scale email blast is sure to convert, it’s not because sending it was a strategic move — it’s because you cast a wide net. If you crafted a targeted newsletter instead, you’d see a better conversion rate and you’d be able to replicate the strategy many times over. Marissa Petteruti calls email blasts a wasted opportunity to generate more revenue, citing:
Another key aspect of any email blast is the target audience. Make sure you’re hitting inboxes where the probability response, purchase or interaction is high. If you’re shooting emails like a loose cannon on a rolling deck, you could put off prospects and customers (if you make it to their inboxes!), tarnish your image and end up wasting a lot of time, money and effort.
This ties into the first 40 of the 40/40/20 rule – even if you have what you feel is a great and well-defined target list, you won’t truly know how great it is until you test it. If you operate a business in a smaller community, this won’t be as critical – but if you’re in a medium or large city, it can be crucial. Using the example above, even if you know that the Life Alert bracelet offer is meant for seniors, in a city like San Francisco or New York, you wouldn’t want to send it to everyone over the age of 55 citywide. Instead, select one (or in a very large city, several) small area to test the market out. Start small and measure the effectiveness and ROI along every step of the way.
As emails and advertorials pile up in your subscribers’ inbox you really need to make sure you optimize your sending time. A few months back we created a super-detailed list of email marketing best practices. As a part of that we run a huge data analysis on when is the best day to send an email blast. As it turns out Thursday morning is the optimal time for the average sender. But hey – you need to make sure what works for you and your audience.
Have a few different buttons on your email template: separate social media buttons that produce pre-written social posts linking to a webpage version of your email, and an "Email to a Friend" button that transfers the email into a compose window so your contacts can instantly forward the message. Just make sure your email has an opt-in button so each new viewer can subscribe to more emails from you if they like what they see.
The law in some countries considers unwanted email blasts a form of solicitation, just like telemarketing calls or junk mail. In Canada, marketing pro R. Timothy Taylor reminds us, it’s illegal to send commercial electronic messages without the recipient’s permission — a marketing email that lands in the wrong inbox could mean fines upwards of $1 million. Legality challenges like this are forcing many growing companies to rethink their marketing strategies as their audience goes international.
Ever since the dawn of time, entrepreneurs have been giving away stuff for free. From the “lite” versions of apps, to samples in the grocery story, or straight up assaulting you with perfume every time you walk past the makeup department. Entrepreneurs of all sorts will fall over themselves trying to give you their stuff for free, all in the hopes that you’ll want to come back for more.